"At its core this is a story of 'Travis' and 'Madison'," said Kirkman, "who are these two schoolteachers that both have kids from previous marriages and are very much in love...this is a show about two people who are a team, and they do back each other up. They do love and respect each other. They’re a happy couple, which is something that you don’t see a lot of on cable television these days.

"Usually cable television focuses on infidelity, love triangles, divorces, marriages breaking down—that’s really the meat and potatoes of the drama we mostly deal with on TV. So having this interesting couple at the core of this show, fighting against the backdrop of civilization crumbling and the zombie apocalypse, really is the core of things. They’ve got two sets of kids. It’s an interesting situation."

"These are characters that are focused on survival and they’re not focused on saving the world and they’re not focused on curing the outbreak. They’re focusing on making sure they have enough food, making sure that they’re in a safe place, and making sure that they’re not being attacked. In that respect, it will be somewhat similar to the original show, but they’re going to be surviving in much different ways. And they’re going to be with much different people and be in an extremely different location."

"I think schoolteachers are on the front lines of a lot of things these days with kids and parents and families and all kinds of different elements of society. They are fairly tough individuals, so we’re going to be dealing with a couple of fairly tough individuals on this show."

"...if you think about the way a zombie outbreak would happen, it would happen very organically. It would be happening for a while behind the scenes. In pockets of civilization there would be news stories that didn’t really make sense and didn’t seem connected. And that’s kind of where we pick things up. There are a lot of things on the news, there’s a lot of chatter and paranoia and concern. And yet the vast majority of the population is ignoring these things and talking about their daily lives, and that’s kind of where we pick things up. And things ramp up very quickly from there."